Rav Avraham Abulafia, Jesus and Professor Moshe Idel.

The phrase which I noticed in Rav Abulafia in one of his unpublished books while siting in Hebrew University was this "האירו קשריו" [his bonds became light] in relation to his being on the cross.
This to me seemed a world shaking revolution in world view. So after that, I looked up some of Moshe Idel's books on Abulafia  and other mystics from the middle ages,-- and that seemed to confirm the basic positive attitude of Rav Abulafia towards this subject.

Sen. Dr. Jensen's forced to say that anyone that dies has to be because Coronavirus: “Well, fear is a great way to control people.”

https://www.valleynewslive.com/content/misc/Sen-Dr-Jensens-Shocking-Admission-About-Coronavirus-569458361.html


He states that he was sent a seven page document from the Department of Health that he must fill out death certificates saying who ever dies must be because of Covid 19. 

The Closing of the American Mind

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind  has this theses: the problems in the USA are a direct result of a basic conflict between Enlightenment philosophers and Anti Enlightenment Philosophers. To this he adds the question of what the Self is?
The question has not gotten less urgent.
But what I have not understood is why he did not bring Kant and Hegel who both meant to answer that exact question!

Was he dissatisfied with their approaches? It does not sound like that in the one time he mentions in a very positive light Kant's three Critiques and Hegel as the greatest of university philosophers.

After pinpointing the problem it is frustrating not to see him point towards a solution.

One thing about Hegel is he is often used by people against the ideals of the American Constitution. Is it possible that this is why Bloom was did not suggest Hegel? And that just leads to the natural question are the many movements that use Hegel all misusing him? [I think so. Still it is hard to know.]

[The way I suggest understanding Kant would be the approach of Leonard Nelson and to understand Hegel would be by the commentary of McTaggart.]

[But I should add that Kant and Hegel I see as mainly for the philosophical aspects, not the political. When it comes to the political issues, the writers of the Constitution of the USA got it right.]

Media Myths About Trump

Bankrupting America

When asked to justify some viewpoint, people often invoke some lofty general principle. The Issue is Never the Issue

The Issue is Never the Issue

Steven Dutch: "When asked to justify some viewpoint, people often invoke some lofty general principle, only to get tangled up very quickly in contradictions. Conservatives claim to be for personal freedom and against regulation, but then face the question why they don't support freedom for others, and are often willing to impose regulations on others, especially when it comes to sex." 

I have had a feeling like this for a long time but could never could express it.
It was like when I was learning American History. It always seemed superficial since the justifications always seemed hollow to me. Not that the justifications were dishonest. But rather I always felt something deeper was going on. Something under the surface.

Since I discovered Daniel Defoe a light went on in my head. I realized all the issues that were and still are facing the USA are simply continuations of the exact issues that were facing Great Britain in the 1700's. So if you want to understand America, you have to understand England.
And I notice this in other areas as well as Steven Dutch points out.
Another example would be American Independence. Taxation without representation never struck me as being something to make war over.  So what with or without representation? I always felt that could not possibly be what was really going on. 

As for Slavery:  There is no human transaction, either sexual or fiscal, that can be free from coercion.  People have to work or else give something in exchange for something else. No one in the USA is bothered by having forcing the middle class to work to pay for Baltimore or Detroit disaster zones. So making some work to pay for others is not the issue. Rather the issue of Slavery is a way to punish WASP's [White Anglo Saxon Protestants] for not giving others as much as others want.

There is an odd thing about marriage in that it does not sanctify sex. This is I think one area in which people are interested in making marriage to be acceptable as a cover and way of sanctifying sin.
Especially Christians seems to have this idea that marriage automatically sanctifies sex. So that deteriorates into using marriage as a way of sanctifying anything.
And that in itself accounts for the panic about a virus that hurts people that have no previous illness --but they do not count obesity or Sodom as previous conditions since that would show bias against those things.

The thing about marriage is that it is no where near as great a thing nowadays as it once was. At best the length of the best of marriages nowadays is about ten years. [I am not talking about marriages from the previous decades.]
And Christians get the subject of sex outside of marriage wrong also. It is not forbidden. לא תהיה קדשה מבנות ישראל is a "kedesha". That is not the same thing as "zona" which is translated as prostitute but in fact mean something completely different. [It is an argument. Either a woman who strays from her husband. Or to some a woman who has sex with one who is forbidden to her.]
In any case sex outside of marriage is a Pilegesh concubine as in Chronicles I 2:46 where we see one of the greatest of all of the generation that accepted the Torah Caleb ben Yefuna, has a few concubines and wives also. [See the Gra in the Shulchan Aruch of R. Joseph Karo. Even HaEzer who brings  a few more examples.]


And the issue of sex with an idolater is not the same thing as gentile. As we see in the argument between R Shimon ben Yochai that the actual prohibition of the Torah is sex with idolaters. And the sages say only the seven nations that were in in the land of Canaan.